Help me predict future problems before they happen

[ilikefish69]

So I finally reached a point that I can sit back and just enjoy my tank. No more messing with it, no more moving rocks and sand and adjusting stuff. No more (for now) trips to home depot for plumbing materials. I finally am at a point where I can just sit and enjoy it. I actually moved my recliner last night in front of it and just sat and watched it instead of the TV. Wife made fun of me for it, oh well.

I am sure that at some point there will be an issue. I have non-drilled overflow going into small container, small container into medium container, medium into big container. Big container has return pump (check valve keeps from backflow if/when the pump were to stop. This was where I completely screwed up the first time around, didn't know backflow was a thing and took me about 2 extremely valuable minutes to figure out that I was siphoning water with the pump turned off. about 30 gallons of water overflowed in that 2 minutes. was not happy)

Can you help me to predict possible issues, and how to prevent them from happening, or if inevitable the best way to get in front of a detrimental issue. Included a rough sketch of the sump. Pics below:

 

[HBtank]

Ensure that the overflow intakes are protected from being clogged. One snail or other debris could cause another spill of the contents of the sump. That why most overflow systems have secondary or emergency drains, or are larger diameter and internal which allow for more protection.

And people making fun of you staring at your tank will be the norm My favorite is most people who do look will not even see amazing coral or fish in tanks and end up noticing the most mundane things like some snail or crab, or of course some pest like aptasia.

 

[ilikefish69]

I don’t have any snails in the sump area, and the overflow box in DT has slots on all 3 sides for inlet. Do you mean putting in a backup drain into the sump, or additional overflow so two lines flowing down into sump? Thanks for help

 

[HBtank]

I can’t tell from the picture exactly but it looks like you have a siphon from the tank into the external box? Anyway, if it is in a slotted internal box then you already have some protection, so that’s good! I am just thinking ahead, as some point you would likely have snails and they can climb out of water into areas, but even a fish could jump in there. Keeping overflow boxes covered is one thing most reefers end up doing for various reasons.

 

[HBtank]

And yeah, look up herbie and bean animal drain systems, I am no expert in external overflows but they all have secondary and emergency drains because the unexpected always seems to happen in this hobby! But my main concern with a non-drilled system would the display side intake losing flow somehow.

 

[ilikefish69]

Ah I understand yes it’s eshoppes pf800 has the U tube siphon. There’s a box in the tank and box outside the tank, so keeping the overflow box guarded from things so the return pump doesn’t return water into DT when it’s not flowing back down into sump? I will definitely look into covering both boxes. The external box gets pretty gross as I did a DIY weir inside the box so suctioning is silent. Works perfect but the water is still to the point it is funky and fimly so I just shake a toothbrush around a little bit to break it up.

good call on the snail covering overflow. Been so focused on the return not leaking/dripping/back flowing that I didn’t think about possibility of DT overflowing

 

[HBtank]

Exactly.